Surprising Follow Up with a MEDEVAC Pilot

I do not have a photo of MEDEVAC Pilot Suzy Danielson

But this poster covers her attitude towards life

Yesterday I posted a story on the DUSTOFF Facebook page I wrote about a MEDEVAC pilot I served with in Iraq.  The story is here.  She was a pilot in the Gulf War in 1991, left the Army in 1993 and forgot she was still a reserve officer.  In 2009, the Army reminded her with a FEDEX package telling her to report for duty.  She was 44 when she returned to active service and deployed to Iraq.  

After I posted the story, I sent Suzy an email, not knowing if she was still using that address.  At midnight, I got an email back from Suzy.  She is in Afghanistan!  Apparently she liked returning to the Blackhawk helicopter cockpit.  I asked her to follow up with me when she returns.

Cold War Draft Army: Best Army I Served In

Cold War Training Exercise

Since my first enlistment in 1972, I served in three different armies.  I first enlisted during the draft near the end of the Vietnam War and the height of the Cold War. When I re-enlisted in 1975, I was in the new Volunteer Army, VOLAR was the acronym at the time.  After eleven years of active duty and reserve service ending in 1984, I re-enlisted in 2007 in the Post 9-11 Army National Guard.

When I climbed into my bunk in basic training in 1972, the other 39 soldiers sharing my room were men between 18 and 20 years old.  None of us were married.  We were from nearly 30 states, from both coasts, mostly from the American South and West, but "Jersey"and I were actually from the Northeast--very rare in the active military. 

No one planned to make a career of the military.  We were all going to "do our time" and get out.  Half of us were planning to use the Vietnam War GI Bill to pay for college, although the reality then and now is fewer than one in ten actually would use their education benefits.  At our active duty stations, we all referred to anyone who re-enlisted as a LIFER: Lazy Inefficient Fuckup Expecting Retirement.  More than 80% of draft-era soldiers served one enlistment and left the military.  We shined our shoes, ironed our starched uniforms, told extravagant lies, and had a common enemy in the sergeants in charge of us.

Five years later in 1977, I was a tank commander in Germany.  The draft effectively ended in 1973, and formally ended in 1975, ushering in the era of the Volunteer Army.  In 1973, new soldiers joining a unit were 19-year-old single males on short enlistments, usually 2 or 3 years.

From 1975 on, when a new soldier joined our tank unit, that soldier was between 19 and 21 years old.  He was married, had one child and his wife was pregnant again.  That was the reason many of these guys had enlisted.  Most had enlisted for four years because the longer enlistment in Combat Arms had a $2,500 bonus.  So my new crewman was married, poor and a father.

The great increase in the number of married soldiers between the early and late 70s meant a lot of soldiers were living off base in poverty in Germany because Base Housing went by rank.  And if their young wives were not in country for their two-year tour, there would eventually be a night when the soldier received a Dear John letter.  Later he would be blind drunk on 80-cent per bottle Mad Dog, MD 20-20.  (Actually the MD stood for Mogen David.  MD 20-20 was the cheapest drunk possible and it always made me smile that the mostly southern boys swilling the stuff were getting drunk on Jewish wine.)

By this time I was a sergeant, I had re-enlisted so I was a LIFER.  They still called us LIFERS, but with more married soldiers, more of them were re-enlisting.  By the late 70s, LIFER had little of the sting it had during the Vietnam War.  The Army was a job.  The Vietnam War was over and until the Gulf War, the military was a pretty safe job.

Then I re-enlisted into yet another Army in 2007.  No one made fun of LIFERs.  I could not find anyone under 40 who had ever heard the acronym.  In 2007 I enlisted in the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade, Pennsylvania Army National Guard.  The unit had more than 100 pilots and several hundred mechanics and flight crew.  More than half of the 2,000 soldiers in the brigade were at least considering a career in the Army, if they were not already committed to Army life.

The current Army, including active, reserve and National Guard, is a professional army.  The Army of World War II really represented a huge cross-section of America. Every family either had a soldier in their family or a soldier next door.  After World War II, for the first time in U.S. history, the wartime Army was not demobilized.  Most of the soldiers went home, but the draft continued and a sizable force remained ready for war as well as occupying the countries of former enemies.

By the time the draft ended almost 30 years later, the Army represented the south and west much more than the northeast.  But it was still not a professional Army. When I re-enlisted in 2007, I was the only soldier that many of my co-workers actually knew.  The museum where I worked had a staff of 55 and had been in business for more than a quarter century.  I was the third veteran who had ever worked there.  When I deployed they had to write a policy for National Guard service.  They never had a serving guardsman before.  My co-workers, to use the southern expression, had more degrees than a thermometer: more than two degrees per person on average including the maintenance staff.  People from cities in the northeast mostly don't even think about military service.

The result is an Army that does not represent America.  It is an Army that is easier to send to war because the people who make the decisions never served and the soldiers who go to war will not come from every city, town, village and neighborhood.

A draft Army is much tougher for politicians to send to war, and the soldiers want to go home when the war is over.  That, to me, is a better Army for the soldiers and for the nation.

MEDEVAC Story from Iraq I Never Posted: Brett Feddersen, Pilot

My supervisor at Camp Adder, Iraq, in 2009 was Medevac pilot, Brett Feddersen. 

            Major Brett Feddersen sits alone in the ready room next to the Medevac hangar at 11pm hunched over his personal computer editing a document for a meeting the next day.  “I’ve got to get some sleep in case we get a 2am call,” he says mostly to the air.  The rest of his crew is asleep or resting, waiting for the call.

            Feddersen is a senior staff officer with 2-104^th General Services Aviation Battalion, but two to four days every week he is a Medevac pilot on a 48-hour rotation with Alaska-based Charlie Company, 1^st Battalion 52^nd Aviation, an active Army unit attached to 2-104^th for the current deployment.  His shift will be over at 9am the following morning, but he had a long flight in the afternoon and a long day of meetings either side of the flight.  “I have to stay balanced, I have to stay rested, I have to complete the mission,” he said. 

            It’s a challenge he faces both in civilian life and on deployment.  Senior Trooper Feddersen has served with the Pennsylvania State Police since 1995, most recently flying Aviation Patrol Unit One in the southeastern area of the Commonwealth.  Adding Medevac pilot to his staff duties makes life hectic, but Feddersen lives to fly.  He arranges his life to complete the staff tasks to the best of his ability, making the time necessary to fly Medevac Blackhawks every week.  He is serious and professional when discussing staff duties, but is all smiles and broad hand and arm gestures describing a favorite Medevac mission.  Even crawling on top of the Blackhawk underneath the rotors for pre-flight checks before starting the engines, he is clearly enjoying himself whether under, at the controls, or on top of a Blackhawk helicopter.

            Feddersen said flying Medevac in Iraq has many similarities with flying for his civilian job.  “Flying for the state police is always on an emergency basis,” he said.  “The mission can be a lost child, lost hikers or hunters, or a bad guy pursuit.  We get the call.  We go.” 

            Medevac is the same.  On the first 24 hours of his 48 hours shift, Feddersen and his crew are “second up,” the backup team that goes if a call comes in and “first up” is already on a mission.  During the first day, the crew must be ready to take off within a half hour and can travel a short distance from the ready hangar.  On the second day the crew moves to “first up.”  The Army standard said they must to fly within fifteen minutes of receipt of the Medevac call.  In Charlie Company, the standard is eight minutes. 

            Whether at Ali Air Base or in Pennsylvania’s Twin Valley the emergency response mission gives Feddersen a real sense of accomplishment, “We make a difference here.  When a soldier is down we do everything we can to get them care and get them home.  At home we find the lost child, get the bad guy, it’s a great feeling.” 

            “One big difference here is we have to be more vigilant when landing at a point of injury,” Feddersen said.  Scanning for mines, IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), and the enemy who just came in contact with an injured soldier are part of every mission in Iraq. 

            Feddersen will turn 37 on this deployment.  He served as an enlisted military policeman for the first 5 of his 17 years of service and also attended college.  He went to Officer Candidate School in 1997 followed by Army Aviation School.  Feddersen is married and the father of two boys.  His current deployment is his second.  He was deployed to the Balkans with the Pennsylvania National Guard in 2005.

MEDEVAC Training at Fort AP Hill

These photos are from MEDEVAC Training at Fort AP Hill at Annual Training in 2013 for 28th Combat Aviation Brigade. SFC Jeff Kwiecien is supervising the training.

Flight Medic Training Soldiers in Combat Medicine

These photos are from Annual Training 2014 for the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.  Flight Medic Staff Sergeant Pamela Leggore is training medics to work under combat conditions.

One More Medal Reminds Me of Stuff That Doesn't Get Awards

On Sunday, September 11th, I received what is very likely the last medal I will get from the military. My unit gave me the Pennsylvania Meritorious Service Medal.  The citation talks about all the things I did for the unit.  It was about writing stories, taking pictures and re-enlisting after a quarter century as a civilian.

In other words, it talks about the kinds of things I did which got praise at the time I did them.  So the 200 words of praise in Army prose was about the stuff I did right and made someone higher in the chain of command happy.

The things I did in the military that were the most difficult and that I was most proud of were not the kind of things that people get medals for.

In 1973 when I got blinded in a missile explosion, I got no award.  Since the explosion happened on a test range in Utah, it was not a combat injury.  I recovered my sight and the use of two fingers that were bent and broken in the blast.  I will always be thankful for the surgeons who got the wire and other bits of shrapnel out of my eyes, but they had to operate six times to get all the metal out.  Facing he next surgery and that feeling of a wire being pulled from my eye was one of the more difficult moments of my life.  As was the night after the blast when I overheard a nurse say I would be permanently blind.

There was a moment in Iraq when I got aboard a Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq in a brownout sandstorm so bad we could only occasionally see the other Blackhawk we were flying with.  At that moment, I thought about the big turbine engines on the roof of the Blackhawk just above the passenger area and about the big gear box between the engines that drive the big rotor blades.  In the crash I imagined, my guts were squeezed like toothpaste out of my Kevlar vest when all that machinery on top of the helicopter crushed everyone inside.  The flight was fine.  The weather cleared on the way back, and I got the pictures the commander wanted.

I am grateful for the award, but every award reminds of the actual best and worst moments I had in the military, not the ones for which I got the medal.

15th Anniversary of September 11, 2001

Fifteen years ago, I saw this image on the computers of the dot-com where I was working at the time.  I knew a dozen people who worked within blocks of the World Trade Center.  I called them.  I know that when you are inside a disaster, you can lose the larger perspective. I wanted to be just a bit of  perspective from outside New York City for Joe Chang, Helga Tilton, Esther D'Amico, Rob Westervelt, Rick Mullin and Andrew Wood among many others.  Those I was able to reach reacted like the New York journalists they are, calm and ridiculously confident that all would be well.

In 2009, in Iraq, I spoke about September 11, 2001, and my long road to Iraq from the day Islamic Terrorists attacked America.  In Iraq, I spoke about Helga Tilton.  She walked home from south of Ground Zero to the northern end of Manhattan in heels.  She was born in Germany in 1943 in Frankfurt, one of the most heavily bombed of the Germany cities.  Helga grew up in rubble, and now in 2001, at nearly 60 years old in her adopted country of America, she walked through that rubble to go home.  Helga died in November of 2007, not long after I re-enlisted. I still wonder if the dust of her birthplace and the dust of Ground Zero contributed to her death.